Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Daniel Hahn and published October 2025

Newly arrived to a Swiss village at the foothills of the Alps in 1953, Nicholas, a psychiatrist, and his wife, Anna, a scientific journalist, have made it through the Second World War physically unscathed, but the mental toll the war has taken is much greater. Working at the village sanatorium, Nicholas employs talking therapy with patients who witnessed the horrors of the war in one way or another, but his own melancholia begins to deteriorate.

Though this may seem complex material on the surface, psychiatry and philosophical debates on the use of antipsychotics, and on religion versus science, it absolutely isn’t. It’s brilliantly written and a pleasure to read from start to finish.

Though only similar in the most tenuous of ways, it reminds of the excellent American short drama series, Shrinking.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5